Eric Reuss, designer of Spirit Island, joined me to talk about this impressive game. Spirit Island puts players in the roles of spirits of an island recently colonized by 16th and 17th century European-looking figures. Unlike games that focus on colonizing and settling an unexplored land, this game has players repelling those colonizers. The game presents an interesting take on what is a prolific style in the board game hobby without being didactic. The component quality adds to the impressive game play quality.

Zev Shlasinger, the founder of Z-Man Games and current director of games for Wiz Kids, joined the show to talk about his new role with Wiz Kids. Zev has been around the industry for a long time, so it was a real treat to get his insights into the hobby. One important topic we discussed was the licensing deal between Wiz Kids and Games Workshop, which seems like a big deal considering how many popular products Games Workshop owns.

Jamey Stegmaier, designer of Viticulture and so many other games, joins both me and Alex (all the way from Japanese) to talk about Viticulture. I have had Jamey on the show for all of his games so far. We discussed where Viticulture came from and how it helped to build Jamey's knowledge of game design.

On Who, What, Why? we discuss game design with game designers and try to learn more about the game design process from the people who design games. Each episode we interview a designer of card games, board games, role playing games, or video games. We have both mainstream and independent developers as guests.